


peace is only when i die

by orphan_account



Category: House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
Genre: Incest, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-04 22:06:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1086198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"these two brothers have always been and always will be inextricably intertwined...their shared history creates a meaning and that meaning is health" ; house of leaves, pg. 252</p>
            </blockquote>





	peace is only when i die

Some people say that life is made beautiful through struggle.

Will Navidson says, _fuck that_.

There was nothing beautiful about the way he grew up. There's no glamour in scrounging for food in trash bins, in having to lie about what your parents do for a living, in struggling to keep shreds of dignity after the unthinkable happens.

If there's anything life has taught him, it's that beauty hardly exists. He's had to dig through cracks for it, he's had to risk his life for it, he's had to savor it like a junkie's last hit.

And he's had to watch it die. Worst of all, he's had to watch it die, every single time.

*

"Navy?"

"Tom?"

"Yeah. Navy."

It's dark, now. Past midnight and it's so cold that Will can see his own breath, but that's just about all he can see. This abandoned house they're squatting in doesn't have electricity, doesn't even have candles, doesn't have jack shit besides a couple empty bed frames and a few cardboard boxes. He's tempted to go through them, but experience has taught him better.

Will sits up in the rotting bed frame, his back aching where splintered wood pushed against his fatigued muscles. He was out all day in the sharp winter cold searching for food and hoping to pick up enough spare change to buy another roll of camera film. His camera is what he cares about most in his life - next to Tom. It's a reminder of better days. It's a reminder that if things weren't always awful, there's hope for the universe to redeem itself in the future.

His eyes slowly adjust to the dark, and he feels a surge of frosty air seep through his skin, through his bones. Blankets are another crucial object the abandoned house lacks, but the brothers have been through worse. There's abandoned houses in the dead of winter and then there's hell.

Tom's standing there, his torn thrift-store jeans loose and low-slung on meatless bones. His hips jut out beneath a paper-thin grey t-shirt from Goodwill, and watching him makes Will's empty stomach sink. On the long list of things he hates, Will hates to see his brother like this. If their lives have taught them anything, it's that they have to put each other first. There's no one else watching out for them. Tom is reassurance that Will exists. Likewise, Will is what makes Tom real. And right now, Tom is fading.

Codependency is a funny thing.

"You okay, Tom?" Will whispers, unsure of what he's afraid to wake up. He almost doubts that his faint soundwaves were able to travel through the grains of darkness.

Until Tom responds, "M'cold, Navy, wanna share tonight?"

Will exhales, clenches his eyes shut. There's no right answer to this; there hasn't been in years. Because he knows how these nights end.

*

It started when they were fourteen, Tom high or something like it off his first joint and Will softened by a few beers they found in the park when the voices echoing within the walls of their home became too loud.

"Fuck them," Tom said. Laughed like it hurt. "Fuck. I'm so high." His cheeks were flushed, eyes shining beneath the humid air of summer nights. Will was thinking about how uniquely carefree his twin brother looked sprawled and dirt-stained in overgrown yellowing grass. Was thinking about how he thought about his brother too much. The constants in your life haunt you that way.

"You're not high, shut up," Will retorted, but there was no real anger to it. "Lightweight."

They laid like that for a while. 

"We should run away," Tom said, so quietly that Will thought he imagined it at first. "Navy," he said, more loudly this time, "we gotta run away, man."

"We can't," Will shot back. Because it was the easy thing to say. "What could you and I ever do on our own?"

Tom bit his lip, hesitated. He took another drag from his joint and tossed it to the side before he rolled off his back and towards his brother, on top of his brother, stomachs pressing, his brother, and Will wasn't moving, couldn't move, couldn't think, his hips bracketed by the thighs of his brother-

"We could do anything, Navy," he breathed, breathed into Will's mouth and then dropped forward like it was easy, like he was dead, his chapped and smoky lips warm and bitter on Will's, first gentle and then harder. Urgent. It made bile rise in Will's stomach but he couldn't tell if that was just the alcohol, all he knew was that he didn't want to stop, not ever, all he knew was that he was sick for not wanting to. All he knew was that he would never get tired of this, and that the deliberate roll and arch of his hips into Tom's, the almost instinctual motion of his fingers rising to grasp pull brush through his brother's long tangled dirty stoner-in-the-making hair, the brief separation between them just long enough for Will to murmur a litany of "brother, holy _shit_ " and Tom to grin, eyelids fluttering, suddenly higher than he'd been all night, the way he slouched his head down again, foreheads touching, mouths connected once more, pushed his tongue through the barrier of their lips and tasted like he was starving, _starving_ , was the beauty hidden in the crevices of scar tissue forged by struggle.

In other words: life may have fucked up the Navidson twins, but they beat it at its own game. They could do anything.

And since that night, they have.

*

Will really tries to stop.

He's not an idiot. He understands reality. He knows they can never date. Or get married. Or anything dumb like that. They're _brothers_.

But he knows that no one else could ever understand what he's been through. Who he is, and why he is the way he is. He doesn't know if he could stand being with someone who will inevitably be unable to read him like the pages of a book.

People can understand pictures. Pictures are easy. Maybe that's why he likes photography so much. One moment in time is so simple compared to what he is. No one will ever know the truth about him, except Tom. Tom's eyes fall over Will, study him like words he already knows by heart. When he touches Will, warm fingers tracing indecipherable patterns on his chilled skin, it feels like he's writing out his soul in Braille. Tom knows Will, almost too well. In a way that makes him never want to let go of his brother.

He knows that one day, he will. One day, it'll be too much. The past always catches up with you.

But for right now, he's seventeen, he's shivering cold, and can't think of anything he wants more than for the person who understands him best to read him, the truth hidden in his naked flesh.

"C'mere, Tom," Will murmurs. He doesn't have to see Tom's lips split apart into an almost perceptibly luminescent grin to know it's there. He scoots over on the empty bed frame, making room, but Tom just lowers himself over Will, tucking his hands beneath Will's shirt. Will jolts against the biting touch, unintentionally shoving his hips up into his brother's.

Tom laughs and it hangs like stars in the darkness; "That's the spirit, Navy, just like that..."

Will holds Tom's back like it's his lifeline.  He thinks it might be.

Their noses brush together. When they kiss, Will can feel the outline of Tom's smile.

It's sickening.

Will smiles, too.

*

When Tom's gone, Will's fingernails bleed.

They bleed as he searches frantically through cement rubble, through rotting wood, through blackness, through asphalt, through books and skin and yellowing grass.

But it seems as though beauty was among the many irreplaceable things the house swallowed.


End file.
